


A Murder of Reds

by QueSeraAwesome



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe- Agent South Dakota Lives, Alternate Universe- Reconstruction, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, F/F, Families of Choice, Fratricide, Healing, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Post-Betrayal, Reconciliation, Red Team South, Suicidal Thoughts, Unintentional Redemption
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-10
Updated: 2015-12-18
Packaged: 2018-04-20 03:06:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4771145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueSeraAwesome/pseuds/QueSeraAwesome
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Murder. n. The unlawful premeditated killing of one human by another.<br/>n. Something very difficult or dangerous<br/>v. To kill a human being unlawfully and with premeditated malice.<br/>n. Collective term referring to a group of members of Red Team.</p>
<p>Agent South doesn't die at the other end of Agent Washington's pistol, not this time. And then she gets picked up by the Reds</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Caboose’s shot goes through her calf and if burns like a motherfucker, she falls. The Meta’s here, Wash is here, she’s shot and she’s going to _die_. Delta’s satisfaction is almost physical, a steel ball in the haze of her terror.

Explosions. Wash yelling, grey and blue armor hurtling through the air and her thumb hovers over the eject button to the portable unit. Delta’s resentments burns as much as the pain. South presses down.

“Good riddance, you green fuck,” she hisses and she throws the bubbleshield and Delta into the bloody sand. She can survive a gunshot. She can’t survive the Meta, not a third time.

She stumbles away, fingers clawing at the cliffside for purchase, for stability, until she’s out of sight. She can still hear them yelling behind her.

She leans back against the gritty sandstone, tries to listen, tries to breathe. She can’t hear steps in the sand, can’t make out the yelled words. She didn’t set her trackers again, can’t tell if they’re coming after her, looking for her.

She stopped praying a long time ago.

HUD useless, she levers off her helmet, lets it hang from her fingertips, gulping down gritty air until it sticks in her throat. Helmet won’t do no good if anything finds her, she wants to drink real air before she goes. Her hair scrapes and catches in the stone behind her. She can feel the grit and dust begin to mat the strands.

She counts her heartbeats in the pulses of pain in her leg.

It’s only after the yelling stops, drifts away she digs the biofoam pen out of her pack, jabs it in her leg, biting down on her glove so not to scream as the foam expands and seals the wound. She pants against the titanium alloy, hates the tears forming in her eyes. The ground is easier, calls to her, and she lets it come to her.

*

The Sun burns down, South is burning.

It’s cooler in the shade, but she can’t stay here. Can’t stay anywhere. Safety is movement. North never understood that. Or maybe he forgot it. It doesn’t matter anymore.

What matters is she’s got to move, find water, proper medical supplies.

South starts walking. Stumbling. Limping. She remembers an old plant not to far away. Might have water there. She just has to get there.

It’s quiet in her head, no low discordant notes of Delta interrupting the silence. No calculations rippling through her thoughts, accusatory even as she slept. She can’t decide if it’s better or worse, the silence. The constant flow of probability. _There is a eleven percent chance you will slip and fall, breaking your neck. There is a point-oh-three percent chance one of your grenades will malfunction and obliterate you._ Keep walking. _There is a eighty nine percent chance the Meta will find you and Kill you for me. There is a two percent chance you will perish from dehydration before reaching the next location with drinkable water. There is a point seven chance your MREs are poisoned and will–_ You didn’t do all that to die like this. _There is a twenty three to thirty seven percent chance one of your old teammates will kill you on sight. There is a nine percent chance you will commit suicide, Agent South._

That was one of Delta’s favorites.

She’s so thirsty. Let’s herself droop, lowers herself carefully, back to a boulder. She just needs to rest a minute. It’s too hot. Too dark. To loud, the buzzing between her ears. She just needs–

The next thing she knows is the sound of tires, boots hitting the sand. She tries to grab for her pistol, but she can’t quite find it, can’t quite reach it.

“Doc, what happened!” a shrill voice asks.

Hands grab at her shoulders and she tries to fight them off. Something smells like baby oil and makes her sneeze. She’s maneuvered over onto her back, squinting into the sun, the figure of a helmet haloed darkly against it. She lets her eyes close again, lets her head hang. Hurts.

“That’s not Doc,“ a voice calls from the vehicle.

“Thank God,” a gruffer voice adds. “I was hopin’ he was dead.”

“It _looks_ dead,” a fourth voice whines. “Donut get back here, you don’t know where it’s been! You could catch something!”

“I never catch anything,” the figure holding her up sniffs. “I’m super safe.”

She convinces her eyes to open again, blinks at the sand. Pink boots. Pink armor. She doesn’t know anyone in pink armor.

“Is it a medic?” the second voice calls.

“Ask it if it’s a Blue or a Red!” the gruff voice calls from the truck. “So I know if I can shoot it!”

South summons her remaining energy to get purchase on his chestplate, pushes away. Mostly she just falls at his boots.

“The fuck away from me,” she growls out of her ruined throat. “Asswipe.”

“It’s a girl!” a voice yelps from the vehicle. “A girl, a girl!”

“But is it a Blue girl or a Red Girl?”

Before the stars close in and drag her under, she hears the arguing break out, the shrill voice ringing in her ears. “ _Can we keep her?!_ ”


	2. Chapter 2

In her dream, she remembers.

The sun beats down on the sandstone, the grit grating against the treads of her boots. She can’t hear it for the sound of her teeth grinding and the little voice in her head, calculating. Droning on an on, an endless march of death, her death. At your current ambient stress levels you will die of heart failure in— Her steps fall into rhythm with his voice and she figures it isn’t worth fighting anymore.

It’s like being a chord, a musical chord, having an AI. There’s your mind, your note, and it has it's own. Separate. And then there’s the sound they make together, what happens when mind and program reverberate with each other, the other thing that's brought into the world where they mesh. Then you’re not exactly just yourself anymore, not really. You’re also the other thing, can’t get away from the other thing, the thing you make together. Too late, it’s in the world. Don’t bother covering your ears, the sound’s inside your head.

Delta positions numbers like razorwire, calculations like siege weapons. The probability you will commit suicide has just jumped to—

“Do something else,” South demands.

“Do you have a task in mind, Agent South?” Delta asks. A voice so precise and detached should not be able to sound so pissy.

South considers a moment. Might as well have him do something useful.

“Calculate how likely it is the others are dead.”

Delta begins to recite.

“Agent Florida: Inactive. Confirmed Deceased.   
Agent Connecticut: Inactive. Confirmed Deceased.”

South’s breathing doesn’t change at all. It’s too dull a pain to even acknowledge anymore.

“Agent Wyoming: Active at last encounter. 73% of Death at this time.   
Agent Carolina: Inactive. 99.95% Chance of Death.”

“Ninety-nine point—“ South sputters. “She fell off a cliff, Delta, she’s _dead_. Why the fuck would you—“

“Her death was never confirmed,” Delta replies, arch. “And it is Agent Carolina.”

“She didn’t have her fucking helmet.”

“It is Agent Carolina,” Delta insists. “She made a point of defying the impossible.”

“That’s the nicest way of calling someone a perfectionist bitch I’ve ever heard,” South mocks, voice sugar-sweet. “No one could of survived that.”

“Agent Carolina could.”

His voice, so self-assured, so cold, so superior. South growls low in her throat.

“Do York.”

Silence.

“Program Delta, execute.”

“Agent York: Inactive. Confirmed Deceased.”

“Yeah, you made sure of that, didn’t you?”

She pulls on the chord connecting them, digs out the memory she wants. She watches from Delta’s eyes as the healing unit fails, there’s only so much it can do. Listens as York groans, as the suit’s supplies of anesthetic and painkillers are utilized and he falls quiet. Alarm drips through Delta's code, sticky like the blood leaking out into York's suit, pooling under his hip. Without the healing unit they have no way to seal the wound. There is no biofoam; they haven’t been able to afford it for a while. Agent Texas was never trained in field medicine. There are no hospitals out here, even if one would take them in. 

He will die. York will die, he will exsanguinate, his left lung will collapse and it will not be quickly. She watches the numbers dance, predicting the time until expected time of death. No, he will not die quickly.

For an AI, just a moment can be an eternity.

Delta calculates the amount of anesthetic and painkiller required for a lethal dose for someone of York’s build and weight.

Delta struggles against her, and the memory swims. South claws it back, latches on to the green light and the sunshine reflecting off that stupid bronze armor of his, the flashy fuck. She isn’t done yet.

She’s dimly aware of his holographic form speaking with Tex, imitating Tex, speaking with Wyoming. That isn’t where Delta’s attention lies, though.

The sensor warning that the levels of painkiller stored in the suit are reaching critically low levels begins to ping in the corner of their awareness and Delta shuts it off. Delta waits, moment to moment to moment, as York’s labored breathing slows, until he is still. His chronometer informs him it has been barely a minute. Delta is thankful it wasn’t any longer, that’s it’s over, he couldn’t—

Delta hauls them away and—

She is nineteen and he’s only newly taller than her.

“Aw, my little itty bitty sister,” he says, scrubbing her hair with a fist.

Nineteen-year-old— what a fucking _kid_ —South squawks and throws him off, staggering away. She’s all elbows at this age, and knows how to use them. He’s all limbs, jesus, he’s so scrawny. He beams at her with that big stupid grin, the one with the dagger hiding in it. Her brother can be a mean fuck when he wants to be, and maybe she should’ve tormented him a little less on being shorter than her for most of their lives.

Maybe this is where it all started, South thinks. Stupid fuck.

Nineteen-year-old South jabs him in the ribs and heads off across the lot, makes him jog to catch up. Right now she’ll be bitching about being hungry, demanding he take her out to dinner before her shore leave’s over already. Her brother’ll still be laughing, spine straight and tall so every stranger they pass can see the two inches he’s got on her now. She’ll have a smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth and she’ll open her mouth to say—

“Agent North Dakota: Inactive. Confirmed Deceased.”

The sun and the sandstone and the silence are back. Nothing but her, purple armor, corrosive code lighting up her neural pathways, burning her up inside. They are both quiet for once. She can taste bile in the back of her throat and somehow it feels florescent green.

There is no logic in causing someone you care for to die, Delta says, accusatory.

“Well, you got that part right, you glowy piece of shit,” she mutters.

She’s tired. She isn’t nineteen anymore. Maybe time for a break. Washington and the blue guy don’t move that fast, after all. She spots a promising spot to hole up, starts making her way down the cliff face.

“Who's next?” she asks.

“Agent Texas: Alive.”

“You’re fucking up, glowstick,” South says, the sneer weak even to her own ears. “Not even a chance of death? Going rampant, there?”

“Agent Texas will not die,” Delta says, voice assured. “She cannot die.”

“Bullshit,” South responds. She manages to find a decent foothold, swings her other leg down. “You telling me she’s some sort of immortal whatever or something? Didn’t know AI read fairy tales.”

“Agent Texas is…different,” Delta says.

“She’s not that different,” South protests. “Everything dies.”

“Not Agent Texas,” Delta insists.

She remembers the heft of the minigun, how it felt like she was carrying death. For a moment, just a moment, Texas looked at her, unarmed, like a deer in the headlights, like a frightened rabbit, like prey.

“Who’s the monster now bitch?”

She remembers turning towards North, turning the minigun on her brother and pulling the trigger (it felt so _good_ ), milliseconds before his sniper rifles opened up on her.

You are, Agent South.

*

She wakes up in the back of a car. Jeep. Probably a Warthog. Her helmet’s gone. So’s the magnum that should be clipped to her back.

South makes a quick list of people who would pick up her half-dead corpse out of the middle of nowhere.

Voices. One in the driver’s seat. One standing above her at the turret….Two (?) in the front seat, one very unhappy about it. None of them are paying attention to her. She kicks a foot with the motion of the jeep, feels something rolling fall against it. Her helmet.

South explodes into motion. Which is to say she lunges unsteadily at the turret operator, chopping him across the back of the knees and sending him tumbling backwards. She sweeps his feet from under him, and pushes, sending him flying off the back of the jeep. By the time the others have noticed and turned around she’s at the turret.

That’s when the screaming starts.

But of course, the manufacturer saw to it that the turret could not actually be used to fire upon its own front seat passengers, so South settles for blasting the ground as close as possible. The guy at the wheel yells and hauls left. The jeep spins and South clings to the turret, refusing to succumb to the wooziness in her head. Her hair whips at her face, stinging. A shot goes past her ear, the roar of a shotgun going off. South snarls and ducks, kicking the turret as she goes.

The turret spins, 360 degrees and around again, a cascade of bullets while she grabs her helmet and jumps off the back of the jeep. Two soldiers tumble out of the front seat as the driver fishtails the jeep around to face her before stamping on the gas. She flicks out a kabar, sends it spiraling into the flesh of the tire, blowing it out as she dodges out of the way. The jeep rumbles to a pathetic stop a few meters away to an anguished cry of “Oh, come on!”

The red one charges her, yelling incoherently and South makes a grab for his shotgun. She gets a hand around the barrel, barely escaping a face full of shot gun shells. Her ears ring, and jesus, she hurts everywhere, she’s so ready for this all to stop already. She elbows him in the face and he swears at her, but his grip on the shotgun doesn’t budge. South sighs explosively and gives up, throwing him away. A frag grenade goes flying by her nose—look left, it’s the pink one, the shrill one, arm already raised to throw another. He’s too slow, she’s right there, hand clamped around his wrist, glaring inches from her own reflection in his visor.

“Hey,” he says, “You’re not an undead abomination!”

“Depends who you ask,” South grunts and drop-kicks him sprawling across the hood of the jeep.

South brings her hands up to shove on her helmet but thankfully stops just in time. It isn’t her helmet.

South stares at the object in her hands. It is definitely not her helmet. It’s a… ball. Like a kickball. With the words “spleenball” written on in sharpie and then crossed out and replaced with “Grifball.”

“What the fucking fuck.”

“Ya lookin’ for this?”

The Red one has her helmet in his hand, holding it aloft like some sort of magical orb. South scowls. The maroon one flinches.

For the first time, South takes a good look at the people who picked up her body and slung it on the back of their jeep like rednecks finding a post-roadkill deer. Red, the leader, still holding her helmet like a trophy and keeping a vice-grip on his shotgun. Orange, fat, keeping the bulk of the jeep's hood between them at all times. Maroon, beanpole, sheepish, rifle trained on her (even if the barrel is shaking). And Pink, hands perched on his hips in perfect imitation of a teenage girl who believes she just won an argument. 

They’re not from Freelancer. They don’t even look like UNSC. And from that display, she’s seriously doubting they’re soldiers at all.

“Who the _fuck_ are you?”


End file.
